The Wailing Moon [song lyric]
Saw the face on the moon last night
Shocked, marvelled and amazed
That the wrong ain’t made right.
Looking down on this broken old world
Over which flags of cowardly deeds
Have unfurled
In ’65 all the kids who cared
Said “rebel against your parents”
‘Cause they were so unaware.
Looking round at the kids of today
Do they care about anything?
Seems they only want to play
Here’s a cry for the young to fly
And then leave behind all the purple haze
Of their cigarettes and their bar-stool theft
And they’re so self-obsessed with their modes of dress
Looking oh-so-cool, mirror-on-the-wall
Tell them all to get wise and leave the ball
Leave that ball
before you fall
Now hear the call
All that youthful energy used
So that proud little egos
Will be soothed.
All they want is to have lots of fun,
Couldn’t care less who gets killed
At the end of a gun
Just so long as you can get high
You don’t care how many innocents
have to die.
Couldn’t care who your government kills
Just wanna party through the night
To get your thrills
Here’s a cry for the young to fly
And then leave behind all the purple haze
Of their cigarettes and their bar-stool theft
And they’re so self-obsessed with their modes of dress
Looking oh-so-cool, mirror-on-the-wall
Tell them all to get wise and leave the ball
Leave that ball
before you fall
Now hear the call
[A wise man once said that the love of most will turn to cold
When lawlessness has spread across this sphere
And when I take in all the signs of this that I behold
I cry out to the young to mutineer]
Boys are cute, say the girls in a dream
While some boy stares at the dirt
With his face in a scream.
Over there in the back of beyond
There’s no justice
and cuteness has long gone.
Girls exist so we’ll be gratified
Say the boys while they dream
How they’ll fly through the sky
Killing natives across the seas
Like they did in those vid-games
When they took out ETs
Here’s a cry for the young to fly
And then leave behind all the purple haze
Of their cigarettes and their bar-stool theft
And they’re so self-obsessed with their modes of dress
Looking oh-so-cool, mirror-on-the-wall
Tell them all to get wise and leave the ball
Leave that ball
before you fall
Now hear the call
Hey young people with your glued-on phones
Here’s a call to come down
Off that broken old throne.
Time has come for you to realise
That the party’s over and you need to
Go and get wise
While you are fiddling the whole world will burn
There you stand thinking you’ve
got nothing to learn
Well my friend, you know nothing at all
It’s high time for you to stop
Having a ball
Here’s a cry for the young to fly
And then leave behind all the purple haze
Of their cigarettes and their bar-stool theft
And they’re so self-obsessed with their modes of dress
Looking oh-so-cool, mirror-on-the-wall
Tell them all to get wise and leave the ball
Leave that ball
before you fall
Now hear the call
Saw the face on the moon last night
Shocked, marvelled and amazed
That the wrong ain’t made right.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
The Naked Troubadour 